I
begin writing this post with very little idea what I am going to say.
As far as I am concerned, the ultimate, definitive,
never-to-be-surpassed post about Captain EO
already exists, courtesy of the superbly insightful FoxxFur. You can
read it here,
and you should. I won't be offended if you read it before, or even
instead of, my post.
It really is a masterful summation of why Captain EO
works, or if it doesn't exactly work, why it nonetheless achieves a
sort of endearing somethingness
that I don't even have words for.
See,
I'm barely one paragraph into this thing and I'm already at loose
ends. Am I finally in over my head? Have I at last discovered my
limits when it comes to Disneyland blogging?
Has
Captain EO defeated
me?
The
answer is contained within the question. No, Captain EO
has not defeated me. Captain EO is not a defeating kind of character;
that is the whole point.
Let
me start over.
I
vividly remember when this short film debuted in Tomorrowland's Magic
Eye Theater. How could I not? The TV
ad spot showed up in pretty much every commercial break that
summer. As a nine-year-old with very little celebrity awareness, I
was only vaguely aware of George Lucas and had never heard of Francis
Ford Coppola, but Michael Jackson? Now that
name had cachet, even with me.
But
maybe—and this is where this narrative goes off the rails—not
enough.
